


sweet rapture

by thunderylee



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Apocalypse, Canon Universe, M/M, Religious Themes, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12593108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderylee/pseuds/thunderylee
Summary: What would you do if the world was going to end tomorrow? Do everything you ever wanted to do, tell your loved ones how you felt, made amends before it was too late? But then, after all that… what if it didn’t end right away?





	sweet rapture

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from agck.

The party was fun and all, but nothing about it screamed “end of the world.”

“There’s only three hours left,” Jin mumbled into his beer, tonguing the opening because he was bored. “The world could end at midnight, and we’ll all be sitting here drunk like a bunch of losers.”

“ _Is this where you want to be when Jesus comes back_?!” Josh mocked, and Jin rolled his eyes. “It’s not really gonna happen, dude. You Japanese people, you believe everything.”

One of the things Jin really wanted to do before the world ended was punch Josh in the face.

“It’s been crazy,” Yamapi said noncommittally. “Most of the stores have been rioted and there’s a  _ten day_  wait to leave the country.”

“Where are they going to go?” Kusano asked with a scoff. “If the world ends, that means  _all_  of it.”

Yamapi shrugged. “We’re at the front of the line. Places like Hawaii will have more time.”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Josh demanded, signalling for another round. Jin wondered if he planned on paying for it, too. “We should be fucking celebrating!”

“We should be fucking doing everything we ever wanted to do,” Jin said with a sigh. “Too bad I can’t be famous in America in three hours.”

“I’m content,” Yamapi declared with a nod. “If the world ends tonight, I’ll die satisfied.”

“You’ve really accomplished everything you wanted to?” Kusano asked curiously. “Told everyone everything you wanted to say?”

Pausing with his glass to his lips, Yamapi looked thoughtful. He took a sip and sat back in his seat. “Given the circumstances, I can definitely say that there’s nothing else I want to do that I can do in the next three hours.” He lifted his glass. “Except drink with you guys.”

“Fucking sap,” Kusano joked, raising his own glass for a toast. “To the end of the world!”

“To insanity!” Josh chimed in as they clinked their shots together.

“What about you, Jin?” Yamapi asked. “Do you have any regrets?”

Jin snorted. “I’ll be dead, what will I care?”

“That’s the spirit!” Josh exclaimed. “Another shot for the man!”

But Jin wasn’t there when it came. He had excused himself to go to the bathroom and never came back.

*

It took an hour and a half to get there, and another half hour to gather the nerve to knock.

It only took twenty seconds for Kame to answer the door. “Akanishi?”

“Why are you home?” Jin blurted out without thinking. “The world is going to end in thirty minutes. Why aren’t you out being stupid and careless like everyone else?”

Kame sighed, a strangely comforting sound that reminded Jin of the old days. “Come in.”

The place was pristine as always, the furniture different from the last time Jin was here. The decor had probably changed quite a few times, actually; it’s been awhile. Kame’s dogs ran up to Jin and he petted them absently, one under each hand as he watched Kame pour them tea in the kitchen. Ever the proper host.

“Are you being stupid and careless, too?” Kame asked gently as he set down the tea tray and sat next to Jin. Next to, not across from. “Is that why you’re here?”

“I don’t know what I believe in,” Jin said honestly. “But I have something to say to you.”

Kame hugged his knees and stared at the floor. “I have something to say to you, too.”

“You go first,” Jin offered.

“I don’t think so,” Kame said. “You came all the way here, you go first.”

“Please go first,” Jin repeated, more politely.

There was that sigh again, and Jin almost smirked at still getting his way even after all of this time.

“Fine,” Kame relented. “I’m sorry we’re not friends anymore. It’s my fault as much as yours, and I get sad when I think about when we were young and inseparable.”

“Only you could place blame in an apology,” Jin teased. “But you’re right. I’m not innocent, either.”

Kame laughed. “Why does it take an apocalypse for us to get along again?”

“There’s still twenty minutes,” Jin pointed out. “More than enough time to argue about something.”

“I’d rather hear what you raced all the way over to my apartment for,” Kame said. “You don’t even look that drunk.”

Jin ignored the dig and took a deep breath. “This is really hard for me to say, but… thank you.”

He expected Kame to ask, “For what?” but all he did was reach for Jin’s hand. Jin stared at it, watching Kame turn it palm up and sliding his fingers between Jin’s. They fit perfectly, just like they did years ago when they were both kids facing the world together. And now they were facing the end of it together.

“You’re welcome,” Kame finally said, and Jin felt the weight of Kame’s head drop onto his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you.”

Jin burned with pride, but he couldn’t leave it like that. “It’s because of you that I became anyone,” he went on, directing his eyes to Kame’s ugly carpet. “You pushed me to follow my dreams and do my best, even if it wasn’t with you.”

“Jin…”

“I’m not done,” Jin said forcefully, and Kame fell quiet. “I never wanted us to end up like this. I thought we would stay together, with or without the group. It didn’t happen like that, and now the world is going to end. I’m sorry, Kazuya.”

Jin squeezed his eyes shut, forcing back all of the _feeling_  that tried to force its way to the front of his mind. It wouldn’t do to spend his last few minutes on Earth crying like a bitch.

So he grabbed Kame’s face and kissed him instead.

There was an initial squeak of surprise, but then Kame’s arms slid around his neck and he found himself with his back on the carpet, Kame’s weight down crashing on top of him and for such a small guy he sure was heavy. But Jin couldn’t really be bothered too much by it because Kame was  _kissing_  him, a power-hungry battle of tongues and it was the best fight they’d ever had.

Kame laced their fingers together again, just in time for midnight, and that’s the last thing Jin knew.

*

“Jin, wake up, we have to  _go_.”

In the few seconds it takes him to remember where he is, Jin thinks that he’s seventeen again. Kame’s voice sounds terrified, childish, like the perfectionist teenager who had Jin sleep over on the weekends just so he could get them both to practice at the same time. He smiles as he realizes that Kame still acts the same way ten years later, curling toward his voice and cringing at the hard surface he’d fallen asleep on.

Just when he starts to wonder why they’d slept on the kitchen floor, a wave of heat washes over him and his eyes pop open because something isn’t right. He’s outside, on some kind of raised platform in a cage that Kame had picked the lock to. Jin has never seen him so determined, so pissed off, and so  _scared_  all at once, and it’s for that reason he scrambles to his feet and follows him without another word.

Kame’s walking quite fast for being such a small guy and Jin’s brain begs for coffee, but then he actually looks at the world around him and realizes that coffee is the least of his concerns right now. The sky is red, casting a glow on everything in the distance, and there are sporadic bursts of fire on different parts of the horizon.

“Oh my god,” Jin gasps. “The world really did end. And we’re in Hell.”

“Not exactly,” Kame mutters, grabbing Jin’s wrist to drag him at a higher speed. “And don’t say things like ‘god’. They’ll find us.”

Jin trips over his feet several times before managing to keep up with Kame. “ _Who_  will find us?”

Kame sighs. “The demons. Come on, I’ll explain it all when we get to the hut.”

The hut is exactly what its name promises – a small shelter made of tree bark and other forms of earth. The mud walls actually make it cooler inside, compared to the sauna that has become the outdoors. Jin still can’t believe his eyes as he slowly follows Kame into the hut, staring as long as he can at the backdrop of hell that he’s been thrust into.

He’s offered a cup made out of clay, filled with dirty-looking water. He must be making a face at it, because Kame narrows his eyebrows that are actually starting to grow back. Jin doesn’t think he’s seen Kame this disheveled since he’s known him.

“I made it really fast, but it’s dry,” Kame’s telling him. “Pottery is the one thing that’s easy now. It’s like an oven outside.”

Jin just nods and takes a drink. It tastes disgusting, but he feels hydrated again. “Where are we?” he asks calmly, or more likely so in shock that it comes out as calm.

“The Rapture,” Kame answers, then he actually laughs. “You must have slept through it all. Typical.”

“What’s the Rapture?” Jin asks. “Why aren’t we all dead?”

“Because that would be too  _easy_ , Jin,” Kame tells him. “The Rapture is when the ‘good’ people are taken to heaven, leaving the heathens to scrounge for themselves in this Hell on earth. We get to stay like this for five months, and then-”

“Five months!” Jin shrieks, and Kame’s hand immediately flies to his mouth.

“ _And then_  the world will end,” Kame continues. “A ball of fire, they say. After that, we spend a thousand years in Hell… and _then_ we die.”

“A thousand years,” Jin mumbles, Kame slowly removing his hand when Jin’s tone stays low. “Who is ‘they’? Who makes these decisions?”

Kame points up, and Jin doesn’t have to ask any more questions. Neither of them are very religious, just what they were raised to believe based on Japanese history, but there’s no denying that _some_  higher power had in fact destined them to this fate. Together, Jin adds bitterly. After Jin had poured his heart out, shared his body as well as his soul with the one person with whom he would have never done those things otherwise – now he has to spend _five months_ surviving in a hut with him.

This really is Hell on earth, he thinks to himself. If nothing had happened and the world had gone on as normal, he could have just taken off to America and they would have both forgotten last night ever happened. Now they’re stuck together. For _five months_.

“What happened to my mom?” Jin asks, suddenly filled with worry. “My brother? Pi? Your family? The rest of the guys…”

He trails off when Kame shrugs. “I don’t know. The demons came for us and I lost you and… we’re both here now, okay? Hopefully they all got taken up to Heaven. None of them were particularly evil.”

“ _We’re_  not evil,” Jin hisses. “I’m no saint, but I’m sure as hell not a sinner! And you, you’re like the poster child for fucking obedience. Why were we left here to rot?”

“I don’t know, Jin.”

Jin lifts his eyes to look at Kame, really  _see_ him for the first time since he’d woken up in this new world. He’s shaking, turning his own lopsided clay cup over and over in his hands as he kneels properly like that matters anymore. He’s wearing the same thing he’d been wearing last night, what he  _hadn’t_ been wearing when they finally went to sleep, and already he’s torn and dirty. It’s only the first day.

“Hey, hey,” Jin says gently, and Kame looks up at him with hopeful eyes. “It’ll be okay.”

Kame nods, and it says volumes of how much trust he puts in Jin, even after all this time and everything they’ve been through, because there’s no way that Jin believes it himself.

*

The scorpions come at sunset. They’re about eight feet tall and menacing, stomping around with their tails swinging and knocking over everything in its path. They sense fear and fuck the minds of whoever comes into contact with them. They don’t kill, because that would defeat the purpose of _torture_.

“Ignore them,” Kame hisses in Jin’s ear. It’s not Jin’s proudest moment, but all things considered, curling up in the fetal position in Kame’s lap is acceptable behavior. “If you’re not scared, they’ll go away and torture someone else.”

“I can’t…” Jin starts, then buries his face further into his hands. “I can’t do this, Kame, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Kame says firmly. “What makes you happy, music? Let’s sing together.”

Jin thinks Kame is fucking crazy, especially when he belts out the first line of Kizuna, but he’s also incredibly smart. Instantly Jin feels relaxed, Kame’s voice soothing his nerves, and he joins in without thinking about it, because the one thing they did well together was sing.

It gives Jin hope.

*

The next time Jin sees Josh, he has horns.

“Fuck me,” Jin gasps, then rethinks his words when Josh’s red eyes light up.

“This is what you get!” Josh is screeching. His voice sounds like three robots speaking simultaneously. “You should join our side, Jin. You could have already if you hadn’t left us for that fag-”

Jin punches him in the face. It hurts like nothing else, like he rammed his fist into a brick wall, and when he squints through his pain, Josh looks unaffected.

The demon before him laughs, a high-pitched, sinister noise that sends chills coursing through Jin’s entire nervous system. “I don’t understand you mortals,” he says mockingly. “You’re so fucking proud. What do you have to look forward to? If I were stuck here like you, I would kill myself.”

“How about I kill you instead?” Jin hisses without thinking as he lunges for Josh’s neck.

It’s not his smartest decision, but he’s not exactly in a place to make coherent judgment calls as he uses all of his rage and resentment to strangle his old friend. It doesn’t seem to be having any effect, though, and the smirk on Josh’s red lips reaches a nightmare level of creepy before Jin feels a tug on the back of his collar and blacks out.

When he comes to, he’s looking up into Kame’s exasperated face. Jin feels like it’s 2004 and he’s just been caught goofing off, and the memory makes him smile.

“Only you would smile at a time like this,” Kame mutters, but he’s smiling too. “You broke your hand, idiot.”

“He insulted you,” Jin says.

“He’s a demon, Jin,” Kame tells him. “He will do worse than that. Why were you even out by yourself?”

Sheepishly Jin looks to the side. “It’s  _boring_  in here. I want to pick a fight with you just for something to do.”

Kame’s soft laughter calls back Jin’s gaze. “You haven’t changed after all.”

Jin snorts, and Kame pokes him with a finger. Then he points to the wall of their hut, where they’ve made a tally mark for every sunrise since this torture began.

“It’s halfway over,” Kame announces, and Jin doesn’t know whether to feel grateful or terrified.

*

Jin keeps getting captured and Kame keeps rescuing him. He’s come across mutant scorpions, demons, and other heathens who have gone insane. Bodies litter the earth, always self-taken. Jin watched someone get tortured once, fire and ropes and humiliation, and it was like a train wreck – he was so engrossed that he didn’t notice his captor until it was too late.

Then Kame saved him. Kame always saves him. Jin never sees how he does it, blacking out before Kame makes his presence known, and he wakes up in their stupid hut with Kame giving him that look. But Kame never gets captured himself, no matter what kind of trouble Jin was reckless enough to get himself into.

As they reach the end of their sentence, Jin starts to wonder if he’s going crazy, too.

“Are you even real?” he asks Kame after yet another close call with a scorpion. “It’s always me… never you.”

Kame’s smile makes Jin want to punch it off his face. It’s pitying, mocking, like how he used to look at Jin back when they were juniors and Jin would talk big while Kame was obviously just humoring him with that smile. Showed him, even if it doesn’t matter anymore.

“I’m very real,” Kame says quietly, casting his eyes downward. “I guess they don’t want me.”

“Or maybe you’re one of them,” Jin says as the thought comes to him. He’s been through too much to keep up his brain-to-mouth filter.

“Don’t be stupid,” Kame snaps. “Is being stuck with me really equivalent to Hell on earth?”

Jin bites his tongue. Being tortured by whatever those scorpions would do to him is probably on the same level as putting up with Kame’s shit right now.

“I’m saving you, you asshole,” Kame growls, looking malicious towards Jin for the first time since the Rapture. It’s kind of scary. “If you would rather be burned and beaten, you are welcome to go off on your own.”

When it’s put like that, Jin feels a little bad. Kame has been watching out for him this whole time. “But why?” Jin thinks out loud. “You never cared about me before. Are you an illusion? Is this a dream?”

A fist to his face knocks him over, and when he can see again, Kame has anger roaring in his eyes. “Did that feel like an dream?”

Jin reaches up to rub his nose. “Ow.”

The next time his eyes focus, Kame’s in his face, grabbing Jin’s hand and putting it right over his heart. “Can’t you feel this? I keep saving your stupid ass, because… because I don’t want to do this alone.”

He looks like he’s about to cry again, and Jin can’t really take anymore of that. “Don’t get mushy,” he chides, moving his hand the short distance from his nose to Kame’s face to pull him closer.

Their mouths collide and it’s only a little painful; for a baseball pitcher, Kame packs a wimpy punch. Everything they’ve been dealing with for the past four months comes barrelling through in their kiss, hands scrapping for everything they can reach and tongues moving like it’s life or death. Right now, it feels like it is.

Kame is familiar; Kame reminds him of the old world. Like this, Jin forgets about the demons, forgets about the fucking Rapture and how they’re just biding their time, and loses himself in Kame. His kiss, his touch, his insistence – Kame wants him as bad as he wants Kame and Jin thinks a scorpion could rip the roof off their shitty little hut and they would keep moving together like this, trying to get as close as possible, to ignore reality as long as they can.

It’s rough and sweaty and dirty and Jin wouldn’t have it any other way. It shows how much Kame has adjusted to primitive life that he doesn’t even wrinkle his nose at either of their states as they practically rip off each other’s clothes and Kame spits on his own fingers for lube. There’s nothing romantic about it but Jin doesn’t care, drinking down Kame’s noises as their cocks rub together with the rise of Jin’s legs.

The last time they did this, right before the Rapture, seems like a lifetime ago. It may as well be, although it’s just as desperate and raw. Jin clings to Kame, who kisses him deeply as he stretches him like it’s a distraction, just like before. Just like the old world, when his biggest regret was Kame, which just seems ironic now.

Kame’s lips linger on his before he pulls away to thrust inside him, the hesitation strangely comforting. He doesn’t go very far, just presses his face into Jin’s chest because that’s as high as he can reach, but Jin likes it better that way. He can feel Kame panting into his chest with his arms looped tightly around Jin’s shoulders and Jin can toss his head back when Kame hits that spot inside him, biting his lip to keep from screaming because it wouldn’t be good to call attention to themselves right now.

“I’m real,” Kame whispers. At least that’s what Jin thinks he hears through the tension in his head, but he lifts his arms to wrap around Kame’s broad shoulders anyway. His body’s bouncing from the force of Kame’s thrusts and his back is hard against the ground, but it all intensifies how Kame feels inside him and Jin can’t stop himself from pushing back.

“Kazu,” Jin gets out, and Kame fucks him harder. A hand detaches itself from Jin’s shoulder and shoves between them, grabbing Jin’s cock and fisting it with no intention on dragging this out. “Fuck, fuck, Kazu, _fuck_.”

It’s hard to think of expressions that aren’t religious, particularly mid-coital, and Jin doesn’t bother to try, just moaning as Kame brings him to the edge and over. Orgasm hits him like a taser, but he still feels Kame pounding into him and grunting into his skin as he reaches his own peak.

They lay there for what seems like forever, until the sounds and uncertainty of the world around them creep back into their sated consciousnesses and Jin instinctively pulls Kame up into his arms.

He doesn’t know what to say, but Kame’s used to it by now and just lays his head on Jin’s heaving chest. It should be annoying to rise and fall like that as Jin catches his breath, but Kame seems unbothered. Jin actually thinks Kame fell asleep until the younger man tightens his hold on him, and Jin realizes that this was as much for Kame as it was for him.

Somehow, being like this makes this whole mess worth it.

*

Jin doesn’t care that they have limited hygienic capabilities, resort to eating questionable food, and neither one of them can shave. The past, present, and future shines in Kame’s unchanging eyes, and it’s enough to keep him going.

It’s the only reason he’s still here.

*

“Jin, wait.”

Jin stops short as he stomps away after yet another stupid argument; all they’ve done lately is argue. It’s like being back in KAT-TUN, but worse because the other guys aren’t there with them. It’s been a long five months.

“Is this really how you want it to end?” Kame asks. He’s way too calm considering it’s October 20th.

“What does it matter?” Jin shoots back like a true six-year-old. “I’ll see you in Hell, too.”

“What if you don’t?”

Now Jin looks at him. “What?”

Kame actually laughs. “You think they’re going to let us stay together? What kind of Hell would that be?”

“But, the past five months-”

“- have been  _torture_ ,” Kame finishes. “What’s more torturous than spending so long with someone and then having them torn away from you?”

Jin swallows. His first instinct is to run back to Kame, tackle him to the ground of their stupid hut and cling to him until the world ends, but right now he thinks it will be easier to walk away.

“Goodbye, Kazuya.”

The weather turns cold as he leaves, a complete contrast to the fires that are beginning to spread, but Jin won’t look back. Head held high, back straight, one foot in front of the other as he ventures into the wilderness from which he’s always been brought back unconscious.

It’s the first time he’s considered ending it himself. Not because of Kame – Kame doesn’t matter anymore. There won’t be any Kame in Hell.

Jin looks out upon the barren, demon-ridden land that the earth has become and sighs, waiting for his fate. It’s almost midnight.

“I love you,” he whispers into the rising flames, for the first and last time.

*

Jin will feel weightless, opening his eyes to soft feelings and pleasant scents. He’ll be confused, understandably, his eyes blinking as he won’t believe what he sees before them.

This will be Heaven.

“I don’t get…” he will start to say, his words trailing off as his vision sharpens in recognition.

Yamapi will be waving at him from a distance, Shirota by his side. Both will be smiling and wearing white. Reio and Kusano won’t be far from them. They’ll be waiting for him.

“Understand?” a familiar voice will ask. It will be very familiar, yet soft and patient instead of scratchy and desperate.

Jin will shake his head in disbelief. Like an illusion, Kame’s eyes will sparkle, his body surrounded by a faint light. He, too, will be wearing white.

“No,” Jin will admit. “Why are we here? Wasn’t the world supposed to end?”

Kame’s gentle laugh will for the first time not trigger him. “It did, Jin. But I brought you up here with me.” He will pause, licking his lips in habitual hesitation while avoiding Jin’s eyes. “I hope you’re not mad.”

“Mad?” Jin will scoff, torn between laughing and rolling his eyes. Kame  _would_  think that taking someone to Heaven against his will would be bothersome. “This is much preferable to Hell, but I don’t understand why-”

“I was chosen to be Raptured,” Kame will interrupt, his words fluid and serious. “But when I got up here and saw you weren’t amongst us, I demanded to return. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Jin will ignore the pounding of his heart and pretend to be unaffected. “That’s stupid, Kazu.”

“It was,” Kame will agree. “Falling in love with you was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Silence will reign as Jin stares at him, seeing the truth in his eyes and reaching for him. “I love you, too.”

“You better,” Kame will tell him. “I was going to go to Hell for you.”

“But you just said-”

“It wasn’t supposed to be temporary, Jin,” Kame will insist. “I gave up my saint rights when I went back for you. Then last night, Yamashita came for me and said that we’d been granted a reprieve. Apparently my stubborn dedication showed everyone up here that we were worth a second chance.”

“And you brought me back with you,” Jin will add. “After we fought.”

“Idiot,” Kame will say affectionately. “We’re Akame. We fight. It’s what we do.”

“And then we make up,” Jin will say with a smirk, and Kame will just roll his eyes as Jin leans in to press their lips together.

In Heaven, kisses will taste like candy.

*

Jin stared in the dingy bathroom mirror, steadily ignoring the obvious sounds of two people having sex in the stall behind him. The mirror reflected his thoughts, the internal battle of his conscience, brain, and heart that all seemed to be telling him different things. Kusano’s questions echoed in his mind – “ _You’ve really accomplished everything you wanted to_? _Told everyone everything you want to say_?” – and the face behind his eyes sharply transformed into his one regret.

If the girl came first, he’d go back to the guys and drink until the world ended. If the guy came first, Jin would man up and go make things right with the one person to whom he owed it.

A low, clearly masculine groan decided his fate, and it wouldn’t occur to him until much later that perhaps there hadn’t been a girl to begin with.


End file.
